Mobile phone add-on opens door to te reo for everyone

The new app will enable users to learn Maori by translating words and constructing sentences. Photo / Thinkstock

Technology is making it easier for all New Zealanders to feel they have a stake in te reo Maori, a leading language advocate believes.

This week, Vodafone and Auckland University senior lecturer Sophie Tauwehe Tamati released the Hika Lite smartphone application, which can translate 600 words and thousands of phrases.

Maori Language Commission chief executive Glenis Philip-Barbara said she had tried the app and loved how non-Maori speakers were using it. "I heard a few radio guys while I was driving the other night who were having a tutu [play around] making up their own sentences.

"The biggest enemy of language revitalisation is whakama [shame, shyness], a terrible sense of 'I'm not doing this right, I'm too nervous to say anything in front of anyone'," Ms Philip-Barbara said.

"The thing with these applications is they give people a bit of a hand.

"That's the really cool thing. When people believe it's our language - the collective 'our' rather than the exclusive 'our' - [anyone, not just] those with tuturu whakapapa ki tena iwi ki tena iwi [Maori], can use this language. For those of us who call Aotearoa home, this is our language."

Ms Philip-Barbara also praised the production of the app, which runs sentences together that are "pleasing to the ear" from a rhythmic Maori point of view.

The Hika Lite app contains English words that have been translated into Maori and saved as coloured tiles.

The user enters the English phrase to be translated, and the app links the tiles together to create sentences and paragraphs.

The translation can be read or listened to - in a male or female voice.

Te reo speakers have had a bit of fun with it this week, discovering it can be made to say things such as, "He tino reka ... te ngeru - hmmmm, the cat is tasty."

Learn some te reo

New Zealanders wanting to buff up their te reo vocab should check out nzhistory.net.nz. The website has a Maori word for every day of the year and a 100 must know te reo terms. Here's a pick of both lists.